A Literal Mercer Staph
by dzha4225
Summary: Oneshot. Feat. Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, the Mercer bacteria/"Virus" in Real Life vs the Fictious Mercer Virus from [PROTOTYPE]. Rated K for laughs (don't believe in me? Just search "Mercer virus" on GOOGLE. And the author "Alex Mercer" in Google Academic.)


**End of PROTOTYPE 1, Manhattan, New York**

Alex Mercer should not be dead-after the detonation of the warhead, the broken pieces of Biomass of the Blacklight virus was scattered across Manhattan NYC. It would take only a single organism going nearby to revive him, and start the events of the second Game.

Alex, controlling from one of the largest pieces of Biomass that happened to land on top of a crow's nest on top of the second highest skyscrapers in Manhattan, NYC, spotted his first candidate.

Mentally controlling the small puddle of blood and goop, Alex Mercer carefully placed himself on the most visible point on the top of the building, and the crows, which were scavenging for Biomass to eat, have noticed his puddle.

The crows came.

The crows have started to pick at Biomass-just as Alex have hoped for. Controlling the Ingested Biomass, Alex Mercer started to consume the crow from within, he felt power returning to himself, and the pile of Biomass have started to reform. . . . . .

And a small colony of bacteria, which have been covered in the same pile of Biomass as it was sprayed over the entire city, thought exactly the same.

Alex Mercer sensed his newly recovering power fading away once again even before he could consume the whole crow-a colony of bacteria, Staphylococcus Aureus, have thought exactly the same when they got hit by his Biomass, just as he thought when he got picked upon by crows.

Commanding the Blacklight Virus within his Biomass to infect the bacterial colony, just as he would do when consuming living Biomass, Alex Mercer thought he would wipe the Bacterial Infection out from his Biomass and get the energy back to reform himself.

Detecting millions of blobs of lipid-coated proteins coming at them, the primitive computational arrays within the bacteria reacted by transcribing, translating and secreting billions of molecules of a powerful lipase and a powerful protease, attaching them to the tip and sides of their Pili. The blobs of lipid-coated proteins expected to be grabbed upon and taken into their victims as a virus would always do when infecting Eukaryotic cells-Instead of being grabbed upon and taken into the cells comprising the Infection, they were met by a maelstrom of powerful proteases and lipases that are now attached to the surfaces of their "victims", their coat degraded into basic fatty acids and glycerol, their capsid chopped down into their constituent amino acids and peptides, exposing the delicate viral RNA encapsulated inside, which got chopped down into fragments by nucleases and taken up by the bacterial cells piece by piece using specialized "transformation" pili, the reverse-transcription and integration activity of the viral nucleoprotein completely neutralized even before they could reach the inside of the bacterial cells-While Eukaryotic cells digest their food in the inside of the cells, allowing viruses to infect them through multiple steps of this process, Bacterial cells digest their food on the outside-Which means that, the Blacklight virus, the most powerful Eukaryotic Virus in all time, one that was able to infect nearly every type of Eukaryotic cells without any resistance, was nothing but tasty blobs of conveniently-packed nutrients for the growing colony of bacteria to digest, eat and analyze the genetic contents to acquire new traits from.

Unable to consume the bacterial infection in the normal way, unable to create the corrosive digestive juice coating that would function as a barrier for bacteria during his full strength due to the lack of energy to do so, Alex Mercer activated his contingency plan by deploying a vast array of antibiotics-both synthetic and natural, floral and fungal, in a bid to kill off the infection that is consuming his Biomass from inside out.

However, the Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus Infection that is currently consuming Alex Mercer's Biomass from the bottom up, simply responded by turning on transcription and translation of the corresponding antibiotic-resistance genes located on their MDR plasmid. One by one, the maelstrom of antibiotics got either kicked out of the cells by powerful pumps that got inserted into the cell membranes, maimed and deactivated by the specialized enzymes that are specifically made for it, or simply bounced harmlessly off the modified target proteins that no longer gets tricked by the (highly specialized, and unfortunately, highly outdated) drug molecules.

The analysis of the viral RNA that used to be the genome of the Blacklight virus, by using Bacterial polymerases, ligases and integrases to reverse transcribe, modify and integrate into highly specific "sandbox" parts of the Staphylococcus' genome, experimenting on it and figuring out what it did using the same computational matrices that every member of the Genus Staphylococcus had, have revealed to the bacterial colony the secrets of instantaneous, intercellular communications, the formulation of a conscious mind, and the encoding of memories for said kind of minds.

Alex Mercer starts to give up trying to get rid of the Bacterial infection as his biomass gets eaten from inside out, his energy drained by the growing colony of Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, and what's left of his mind have started to fade away.

The Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus learned that the owner of the piece of Biomass was a viral consciousness entity called Alex Mercer. From the memory oligonucleotides extracted from the rest of the Viral content of the piece of Biomass, the Bacteria learned the formulation of a human form one that is far more agile and capable than a simple blob of bacteria as they currently are. From the memories carried by the same group of viruses, the Bacteria learned the formulation of all the abilities of the viral consciousness that used to occupy it's former food and home. And the fact that the outside world is full of tasty, tasty blobs of fats and proteins laying everywhere in the city after a "Nuclear Blast" have brought a piece of the Biomass that used to belong to this viral consciousness to them, have also scattered pieces of biomass from the same viral consciousness all over the "City", spreading cultures of food all over the place.

On the second tallest skyscraper of Manhattan NYC, an Amnesic Alex MRSA stood up from the puddle of bacteria that the Biomass, the Crows and a piece of the viral consciousness used to be, gaining consciousness as the bacterial mass formed their first conscious, multicellular construct.

On the tallest skyscraper of Manhattan NYC, Alex Mercer, still traumatized by the loss of one of the largest pieces of his Biomass to a simple Bacterial Infection, sworn to spread the Blacklight virus to the entire world and eradicate every bacterium on the entire globe.

The other Alex MRSA just want more of the blobs of fats, RNA and proteins to eat.

And maybe producing a few more copies of their convenient-to-use Human Form to better spread their offspring to sources of food.

Using his recovered evolutionary traits, Alex Mercer ran, jumped and glided toward the bacterial infection, and attempted to devour the bacteria with all his might he'd regrouped from a consuming spree after his recent resurrection.

Using their newly acquired transformational traits, Alex MRSA dashed and swung toward the recently resurrected viral consciousness, knowing that if they couldn't eat this block of food in time, the blob of food might instead eat them.

Some of the virus gets off Alex Mercer to infect normal people, turning into Evolved under Alex Mercer's control.

Some of the bacteria gets off Alex MRSA to ingest and upload the minds of uninfected people into bacterial bodies that would become first Children of MRSA.

James Heller was deployed inside the zone where the two Alex would meet in their battle of life and death.

Which pathogen he would contract during the battle of two infections? And which side he would choose?

Granted, Whichever side James Heller choose in the second Game, he would definitely end up eating one of the Alex Mercer/MRSA alive.

The era of the Evolved, or New Yellowlight (or Goldlight? Since Staphylococcus Aureus means "Golden grape-formed berries" in Latin.), have begun.

(Prequel to Dark Forest: a Black, Viral Fate. See on my profile.)


End file.
